The present invention relates to a vehicle-installed telephone apparatus that is installed on vehicles and the like.
Recently, with the spread of car telephones and portable phones, the scene, that drivers respond to the incoming call of a portable phone and the like, is often observed on the street. Since the danger of the case where drivers call while driving vehicles and the like is well known, it has been beginning to emerge the necessity for taking measures that the drivers do not have to respond to the incoming call of the portable phone. Therefore, in the prior art, proposed was a vehicle-installed telephone apparatus having a function that when an incoming call of the telephone is confirmed while a vehicle is running, it is automatically switched to the speaking state and announces that the driver can not respond because of while driving, in order not to have to respond immediately to the portable phone, even if its ringing sounds are rung while the vehicle is running(Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No.7-115680).
In addition, there is another prior art in which the driver is informed that an incoming call is received through the direct conduction of vibration to the driver by means of a vibrator function of the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus without making ringing sounds when they become an incoming state.
However, the above-mentioned vehicle-installed telephone apparatus has a problem that the ringing sounds of the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus are suddenly rung or vibrations are suddenly started when an incoming call is received while driving. In other wards, when a driver concentrates his consciousness on driving a vehicle, he/she would be instantaneously surprised by suddenly making ringing sounds or starting vibration, and while he/she would be preoccupied with the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus, he/she could not concentrate on driving vehicles and the like. Therefore, he/she would become scatterbrained and enter in a very dangerous condition.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a vehicle-installed telephone apparatus which can particularly make a driver be able to concentrate on driving vehicles and the like without preoccupying with the vehicle-installed telephone in view of the problems in the prior arts of the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus.
According to the present invention, there is provided a telephone apparatus, which is installable on vehicles, and comprises running detecting means for detecting that the vehicle is running, incoming call detecting means for detecting that an incoming call is received, announcing means for announcing that the incoming call has been received, and control means for controlling the announcing means. When the running detecting means detects that the vehicle is running and the incoming call detecting means detects that the incoming call is received at the same time, the control means controls in such a manner as to invalidate the operation of the announcing means, which is controlled by a microcomputer built in a portable phone. Accordingly, the driver is not bothered with the ringing sound of the portable phone while driving and can concentrate on driving, thereby the safety of driving is improved.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus, further comprising message transmitting means controlled by the control means. The control means controls in such a manner as to send messages stored in the message transmitting means when the running detecting means detects that the car is running and the incoming call detecting means detects that the incoming call is received at the same time. Because of this, it is possible to announce that the driver can not answer the incoming call because of while driving, and the sending-side can avoid being worried because the sending-side can know the reason why the driver can not answer the incoming call.
It is another object of the present invention to provide the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus further comprising voice synthesizing means controlled by the control means and a memory where data of incoming call records is stored. The control means controls in such a manner that messages on the basis of the data of incoming call records stored in the memory are converted into voice by the voice synthesizing means, and that the voice is output, when the running detecting means detects that the vehicle is not running. Therefore, the driver can know immediately that incoming calls are received, because the data of incoming call records is read out automatically when the vehicle is stationary, and can deal with them by calling back from the vehicle-installed telephone apparatus.